To Understand Her Own Heart
by aeternamente13
Summary: (Lizzie Bennet Diaries) Suddenly, there were her dreams, inconveniently becoming reality. Sequel to None But You by TheGreatSporkWielder. Go read that first.


Haven't read _None But You_ by TheGreatSporkWielder yet? Go read it first because (a) it's wonderful and (b) this will make a lot more sense.

**To Understand Her Own Heart**

_"To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart was her first endeavour. […] How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her, as every feeling declared him now to be? When had his influence, such influence begun? When had he succeeded to that place, which Frank Churchill had once for a short period, occupied?" —Emma, chapter 47_

* * *

The sunlight is coming from the wrong direction. That's the first thing that alerts Lizzie's sluggish, hung-over brain that she's in the wrong room. Her eyes make several false starts at opening, as her eyelids keep involuntarily snapping shut against the brightness of the room. _Yellow._ The walls of the room are covered in a pale yellow wallpaper, not the blue with gold patterning that she had been growing accustomed to.

Different covers (she's lying on top of, not underneath the duvet), different dresser, different placement of furniture, doors, and windows… _why am I in a different room?_ She frowns, and suddenly becomes aware of her splitting headache.

_Time for a glass of water._ She's not looking forward to trying to locate the kitchen from where she is—wherever that is. Perhaps the nearest bathroom will do.

But as she forces her body to a seated position at the edge of the bed, she sees a silver tray on her bedside table with a glass of water and… _a bottle of aspirin?_

"Wonderful," she grumbles aloud. Someone knows she got wasted last night. With her luck, it's probably Darcy.

_Darcy…_

The memory hits her with such force she nearly falls back onto the bed. Darcy's hair between her fingers, Darcy's hands resting at her neck and at her waist, his lips, his tongue… _It was a dream—it had to have been a dream—please tell me it was a dream!_

She tries desperately to remember, to tease out the reality of last night, but her head's all fuzzy and uncooperative and in pain. _Take the damn aspirin!_ her head commands, and she obeys, her fingers fumbling with the bottle, then with the pills, but finally the medicine travels down her throat with a generous mouthful of water. After a moment, she downs the rest of the glass, then rolls back onto the bed, rubbing her eyes and trying to calm herself down.

The slow trickle of returning memories is not helping matters. She is confronted with random snatches of her own words:

_"…Y'know, you're actually pretty cute…"_

_"…I rejected you pretty damn hard, and hundreds of thousands of people saw it…"_

_"…a nice guy wouldn't have watched my videos…"_

_God, did I actually say these things?_ she thinks in disgust. She takes a deep, steadying breath. _Calm down, you still don't know it wasn't a dream._

There have been a lot of dreams about Darcy lately. Sometimes he hates her. Sometimes she hates him. But sometimes, there isn't much hating going on at all—quite the opposite, in fact. She wakes up from those dreams in a jumble of sheets and conflicting emotions, but after the initial shock passes, she does her best to put them out of her mind.

But the images flash through her head at all the most inconvenient times—passing Darcy in the hallway at work, talking with Gigi and noticing that her smile (while much more frequent) looks precisely like her brother's, going out with friends from work and sitting by in silence as the conversation abruptly shifts to the pleasures of working with such an attractive boss. That was when the drinking began in earnest last night.

And then there were the events that may or may not have taken place when she returned to Pemberley. If that was a dream, it was an oddly realistic one. These dreams usually took place in an impossible combination of places—a hallway in the style of her high school would lead to the bedroom she stayed in at Netherfield, and a trap door in the closet would lead to an underground tunnel (even though she'd stayed on the third floor) where Darcy was waiting with her costume theater props, and Lizzie was not sure she'd ever look at that frilly blue hat the same way again.

No, this time, she was in Darcy's office, and there were no trap doors or seamlessly incorporated settings from her childhood, no tearing off of costume elements and other items of clothing in a darkened tunnel. Darcy was alternately passionate and aloof, which, odd though that behavior might seem coming from anyone else, was precisely what she had come to recognize as characteristic of him (admittedly, generally without all the kissing).

So as much as she hates to acknowledge the possibility, these events assaulting her memory probably _did_ actually happen.

At this realization, she scrambles to pull the duvet up from underneath her body and throws it over her head, shutting out the yellow room, the empty glass and open bottle of aspirin, this entire mansion of a house—but she can't shut out Darcy—his surprise when she abruptly sat in his lap, the way his expression kept intensifying as she spoke until she literally could not resist its magnetic pull, and suddenly, there were her dreams, inconveniently becoming reality.

_Reality. This was real. It happened._ The thought sets her insides jangling, and she can't tell if she's feeling the burning numbness of shame or the racing exhilaration of sated desire. Whatever it is, Lizzie knows it will prevent her from achieving any further sleep this morning. Besides, she needs to pee. And shower.

As she sits up again in the bed, she sees that this room has an adjoining bathroom. _How many bathrooms does this place have, anyway?_ She decides she'll relieve her bladder there, but for showering she'll need clean clothes, and will thus need to get back to her room.

_Good. We have a plan._ She stands up slowly to prevent her head from throbbing in protest, uses the bathroom, and, feeling a good pound lighter, exits her room, finding herself in what she recognizes as one of the main first-floor corridors. There should be a staircase not too far to her right, if she remembers correctly.

She turns in that direction and immediately freezes. Darcy is standing on the other end of the corridor, himself motionless, eyeing her warily. She briefly considers turning in the other direction, but of course Darcy knows as well as she does that the fastest way to her room is past him.

So she begins to walk toward him, and he, taking her cue starts walking too. They both stop when they come within a few feet of each other.

Darcy clears his throat. "Good morning, Lizzie."

She has always thought her nickname sounded slightly odd coming from him. For everyone else, it's simply her name, but Darcy is so formal about everything (the man is wearing a _bow tie_ on a Saturday morning), it feels like he should be calling her Elizabeth, or even Miss Bennet, but he never has—it's always been Lizzie.

"Good morning…" she answers, leaving his name out of her greeting, because she suddenly feels strange calling him by his last name. She can't quite bring herself to adopt Gigi's practice of calling him Will, but calling him Darcy somehow doesn't sit well.

"How are you feeling?" he asks. If she had been harboring any lingering illusions about Darcy's awareness of last night's events, this question effectively quashes them.

"Fine, thank you," she says with a smile. This should be the moment when they continue past each other, leaving their next meeting for whenever their paths cross again at work, but neither of them moves. For her own part, Lizzie finds that her desire for clarification overwhelms her shame and embarrassment. "Did I…" she frowns. How should she word this? "Did I… visit you last night?" It sounds as weirdly formal as the most stilted of Darcy-isms, but it will have to do.

Darcy's face reddens as he gives a stiff nod to the carpet.

Lizzie winces. _That bad, huh?_ Taking a deep breath, she asks, "Did I say and do… all the things I think I did?"

Darcy's eyes find hers again, and when he speaks, it is with the subtle upward quirk of one corner of his mouth that she has begun to associate with his (surprisingly successful) attempts at humor. "I can't say for certain what you think you said and did, as I can't read your mind," His face sobers, "but I think the answer is probably… yes." He punctuates this with a redundant nod of the head.

"Oh, God," Lizzie breathes, her suspicions confirmed, "I really didn't mean to—"

He holds up a hand to quiet her explanation. "It's fine," he says. "I don't hold you to anything that happened last night." He lets his hand fall to his side.

"I—thanks," she says.

He nods again, his eyes far away and forlorn. "Well, I suppose I'll see you around…" He walks past her and continues down the hall. Lizzie turns to watch him. Something is tugging at her memory…

_"It's too bad you don't love me anymore…"_ she'd said, sitting on his lap stroking his mouth and face in ways that made her uncomfortable now just thinking of it.

_"What… what makes you think I don't?"_ came his choked reply. She'd dismissed the question at the time, citing all the reasons why any sensible man would hate her, but now, seeing the slump in his shoulders, the downward tilt of his head as he walks dejectedly away from her, she knows he was being completely honest.

"Do you really still love me?" she asks, barely realizing she's said it out loud.

He stops, but doesn't turn, doesn't even lift his head. "Yes," he whispers, barely loud enough for Lizzie to hear, before he continues walking away. Lizzie watches mutely. There's a part of her that wants to run after him, grab his arm to turn him around, and pull him into a kiss. But that would be a terrible idea—her hangover breath is pretty pungent right now, and that would probably ruin the moment.

She can't say how long she continues to watch after he rounds the corner and disappears into the depths of the house, but eventually, she turns to navigate her way to her room. She isn't really cognizant of what outfit she picks out to wear for the day. It's Saturday, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

She's been in the shower long enough that the air is heavy with steam and her fingers are all wrinkled. It's taken her longer than usual to shampoo and condition her hair, to soap up and rinse off her body. She keeps pausing mid-lather and staring at the glistening cascade of water droplets, as if they'll tell her what she should do.

She's spent so much time trying to ignore her dreams about Darcy and the accompanying development of feelings that, for the second time in the past few months, it took an emotionally fraught encounter with Darcy to bring her to the realization that she's been deliberately misunderstanding parts of herself. If it were any man in the world other than Darcy, she would gladly have admitted her attraction to him long before now.

When had she started to memorize the subtle variations of his facial expressions? When had she begun to search out the rare smile, the joking glint of an eye, the sarcastic arch of an eyebrow? At what point did she start to yearn for the days at Netherfield when their interactions, though often acrimonious, had at least existed? The days when he'd still loved her, terrible as he was at showing her.

But he still loves her _now_. He'd said so just minutes before.

She dropped her loofah as a surge of emotion welled up inside her, dancing on her skin along with the shower droplets. This exhilarating, dizzying, electric tingling that had now spread through every inch of her body could only mean one thing…

_I am in love with William Darcy—every bit as hopelessly, ecstatically in love with him as he is with me._

She makes a breathy sound somewhere in between a laugh and a gasp as she tries to process this new discovery. But her brain catches up quickly enough—_Holy shit, what am I waiting for?_

She wrenches the shower knob to the off position and jumps out of the shower, furiously toweling herself dry before throwing on her clothes. She brushes and mouthwashes the stale taste of alcohol from her mouth, but doesn't bother with any of the rest of her morning regimen, her face cream, hairbrush, and blow dryer lying disused on the counter. She doesn't care if her hair is a damp tangle down her back—she just needs to find Darcy, _now_.

She hurries through her room and opens the door to the hallway to find Gigi with her hand raised, about to knock. She's wearing her tennis outfit and carrying a racket. "Did you forget?" she asked, noting Lizzie's distinctly _non-tennisy_ attire.

"Uhh…" Lizzie falters. She likes spending time with Gigi, but right now _none of this matters_. "Can I take a rain check?"

"Yeah, sure," Gigi says, looking confused and crestfallen, and far too much like her brother for Lizzie's comfort right now.

"Do you know where your brother is?" Lizzie asks, not even caring that this might arouse Gigi's suspicions.

"In his office—Lizzie are you okay?"

Lizzie grins. "Never better," she says with absolute sincerity. "And I promise, we can play tennis tomorrow." Gigi nods vaguely as Lizzie edges past her through the doorway, then takes off down the hallway at a jog.

She reaches his office soon enough and peers around the door frame. There he is, sitting in the same seat as last night, staring blankly at his laptop screen. She can feel the mounting excitement build up inside of her like a whirlwind as she gathers her courage to say what needs to be said. She knows how quickly she can change his state of mind, from the numb depression she can see in his eyes right now to the delicious ecstasy bubbling inside of her at this very moment—all by telling what she now knows to be the simple truth.

Then, just at the moment she's preparing to enter the office and make her presence known, her cell phone does the job for her, tinnily broadcasting what she recognizes to be Jane's ringtone. She doesn't even remember picking up the phone in her rush to get out of the room, but there it is.

Darcy looks up from his computer, shocked to see Lizzie there at the doorway to his office once more.

Lizzie would come to regret answering Jane's call more than she regretted any action she'd committed in her entire life, including the time she'd viciously rejected Darcy's first profession of love. If she could have put off speaking to Jane and hearing her devastating news for just one minute—how could that minute possibly have made any difference, really?—her parting with Darcy just hours later would have been on completely different terms.

But she never ignores Jane. It won't do to begin ignoring her now. She gestures for Darcy to allow her a minute, fishes her phone out of her pocket, and answers.

* * *

_A/N: I know, I know, I know! You all hate me right now! You guys have no idea how much I wanted to give this a happy ending. Seriously. But it's the Pemberley arc, and I just have this gut feeling that the Pemberley arc is not allowed to end happily. Sorry!_


End file.
